Buy essay on The Censorship of Media

In my opinion, the censorship in media has both the strong and weak sides. In the majority of cases the society desperately needs it, because it’s a serious tool that helps to regulate explicit language, violence or inappropriate sexual content. These elements of programming have a very negative influence on the young audience.
But it needs to be emphasized that censorship in media it is not very effective overall and society has to find ways to improve the censoring approaches, especially in terms of children’s and young people programming.
Major advantages of the censorship of television programming are:
1. The prevention of children and young people from inappropriate content.
2. Religious conflicts are helped to be avoided by excluding some insulting or debatable content.
3. Information that has a strategic importance for the country is not available for the wide audience.
4. The exclusion of scenes with health harming behaviors (for example, smoking) is a good tool of saving the nations’ health.
5. The exclusion of violent scenes prevents viewers from copying dangerous actions.
6. Political correctness and balance of opinions are supported through the censorship usage.
7. The knowledge about dangerous technologies is not accessible through TV. It means that various terrorist groups at least do no have a direct and easy access to it. (Anderson 127)
8. The advertising with unrealistic claims is heavily regulated
9. The exclusion of demonstration of apparent disrespect to any person or group protects the audience from possible offences.
10. The culture and moral is better protected because of the censorship and outrageous things are being avoided. (Foerstel 16)
At the same time, there are no direct evidences of the effectiveness of the censorship on TV. Among the possible disadvantages of the censorship the following could be named:
1. TV programming censorship censors some topics that may be useful for educational purposes.
2. It is often used by leaders of societies with a low level of democracy in order to build the perfect image and exclude any negative comments about themselves and their dictatorship.
3. There is an issue of freedom of speech and where are the limits of it. “Any talk of restricting what can or cannot appear on television does raise free-speech concerns. But it also involves what we as a society think is appropriate for young people to see. Any serious consideration of the issue must attempt to balance these competing interests.” (Kaminer & Massing 22)
4. There is also a possibility of ignorance developing in our society because of excessive censorship appliance.
5. The perceptions of people are influenced by TV and it means that the wrong understanding may be received because of the censorship.
6. Some people claim that censorship in media influences badly on creativity and the ability to think in general.
7. Also there is a commonly known rule that if the information is hidden, public becomes even more curious and obtains it in other ways.
8. It’s basically a tool of control over society; therefore censorship often has a bad image in the eyes of the society. (Foerstel 17)

Works cited
Anderson, Terry. “Terrorism and Censorship: The Media in Chains.” Journal of International Affairs. 47(1). 1993: 127-136.
Garry, Patrick. “An American Paradox: Censorship in a Nation of Free Speech”. Praeger. Westport, CT. 1993: 97. Print.
Foerstel, Herbert N. “Banned in the Media: A Reference Guide to Censorship in the Press, Motion Pictures, Broadcasting, and the Internet.” Greenwood Press. Westport, CT. 1998: 1. Print.
Kaminer, Wendy & Massing, Michael. “Toxic Media versus Toxic Censorship”. The American Prospect. 12 (1), 200: 22. Print.
Manganello, Jennifer, Franzini, Amy and Jordan, Amy. “Sampling Television Programs for Content Analysis of Sex on TV: How Many Episodes Are Enough?.” The Journal of Sex Research. 45 (1). 2008: 9. Print.
Olukotun, Ayo. “Repressive State and Resurgent Media under Nigeria’s Military Dictatorship, 1988-98.” Nordic African Institute. Uppsala. 2004: 119-121. Print.